


I Know What It Means to be Bare

by arielchan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielchan/pseuds/arielchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I would choose you,” he says desperately. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>“If you were Ginny?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“If I were myself!”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know What It Means to be Bare

His hands shake as he draws the Muggle cigarette to his lips, only giving the appearance of smoking. It’s a technique he’d practiced for years in his attempt to quit the actual habit while still retaining the reputation that came with it: cool guy, bad boy, dangerous personage. Mostly these days it all adds up to “stupid wanker”, but he still likes the concept of it as it once was.

“You’re the James Dean of the Wizarding world, you know,” says the person behind him and the corner of his mouth twists up slightly, a snarl or a smirk or maybe just a pull from the thin, puckered line of scar tissue than runs along the right half of his face, white on pale.

“All the James Deans of the world are dead,” he says in response. “You should know that no real rebel ever sees forty.”

“No,” Harry says, smiling sadly. “You’re right of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

Harry waves his hand carelessly as if to brush his apology out of the air. “Don’t be,” he says. “You didn’t mean it like that. You never do any more.”

“We all grow up,” he says. “Some just don’t do it in time.”

“Well,” Harry says after a few seconds of silence. “Enough pleasantries. She wanted me to meet up with you here, to tell you she decided.” He gestures at Harry to continue, but he’s not really listening anymore, caught in the web of memory.

It’s so clear, over twenty years later, how it all began. Nights unable to sleep were spent pacing, circling the house until finally he ended in the library with the two girls, one brown eyed and bushy-haired and the other a phoenix flame, both bent over tomes thicker than their torsos. He was an unwelcome intruder in the research sanctum until the night that he recognized a book from his own home library and was able to list other books he knew on the same subject. Suddenly, she had looked up at him with excitement and pride and he had burned. He was an asset.

“She told me she doesn’t want to do this,” Harry was saying as he tuned back in. “You know she’d continue things just as they are if she could, but-“

“I know,” he says. “Better than you do. Those Weasleys and their biological clocks. Tick tock. She’s reaching the end of her chances.”

“She's pregnant,” Harry says. “She was already having trouble, didn’t know how to handle the stress of what we were doing against the opinions of everyone else anymore.”

“Bugger everyone else,” he says vehemently.

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Sorry.”

“She feels like the baby made the choice for her,” Harry continues again, gripping his companion’s shoulder tightly. “And she feels like it’s the right one anyway.”

“Congratulations,” he says with a bitter bite.

“Congratulations yourself,” Harry replies. “It’s your own green-hearted kid she’s carrying. You’re moving back into the house.”

He’s frozen in shock, but Harry’s warm hands on his shoulders are an anchor to which he returns. “What about my choice?” he says. “What if I choose differently?”

“I think the baby decided for you, too.”

He grabs Harry’s hands in his own, grips them tightly. “I would choose you,” he says desperately.

“If you were Ginny?”

“If I were myself!”

Harry’s light fingers tangle in the soft hair at the nape of his neck, silver entangled with the pale gold these days, and he pulls the other’s mouth to meet his enthusiastically for a moment before he steps back. “She needs you more,” he says, and turns to leave.

“Who would you choose?” he calls at the other man’s back. “If she’d let you have your own choice?”

“I’d keep you both,” Harry says, turning back to smile. “Selfish, I guess.”

As he walks off the blond man thinks of stormy kisses, chaotic affairs, society, and strawberry blond children toddling through a gloomy mansion, lighting the halls with their smiles. He thinks about warmth and anchors, and dropping his cigarette he runs to catch up.


End file.
